The space was dark, filled with flickering candles.It was soft and warm—nest-like and cave-like, littered with black furs.All healers in Aalt visited with a bleeding house once every seven or eight days, offering what they could.Those who paid healers paid a small additional portion—one tenth or so—specifically to provide for those in the bleeding house.There was always broth and tea waiting for any who entered.There were clean rags and linen bandages, and priests who would come and collect the blood and deliver it to the forest so that the trees might love humans more.
I sat in the space, left entirely alone by the others present and argued with the king in my mind.I am entirely well.I can do all things as normal.I ignored the part of me that felt some relief.I had no need to pretend I wasn’t feeling the movement of blood.Performing is tiring, you see?
Now, why do I tell you this?It is such a small detail and so private as well.
To me, it is representative of the true difference between the Norsern and the Islish.But, I suppose, there is also a part of me trying to explain how defenceless I was.For you to understand many of the things that came next, you need only understand that I wasn’t someone used to being treated with care.
I had no armour against gentleness.
Seventeen
Ispent two days entering room upon room in the floating palace, keeping a count of my paces, avoiding the wild games of the sea dogs that seemed to have no restraint or subtlety in them.The first hour of these days had been filled with my meetings with the king.Since I had few questions I was bold enough to ask, this time had become language lessons with King Arik—he was to teach me first, but then others would teach me after.He had said, “Everyone uses their language a little differently, is it not so?”and that I must learn from different speakers or I wouldn’t truly learn at all.
I was taught to saycome, stay, yes, guide, song, laugh, read, want, name.
I learned to say:What is this named?for when I wanted to know a specific word.
Solewas the word for song-making.But it was said like,So-laye.
Then I would wander.
I began to understand that the palace was arranged similarly to the king’s keys: the outer rooms tended to have the bronze locks.These were the bedchambers for visitors, captains, and guards.Training rooms where sea dogs wrestled with each other amid the shouts of onlookers.Feasting halls.Gardens.Game rooms.Libraries.But unlike other libraries, they weren’t only for reading materials.
King Arik had a library of scrolls, tablets, and bound parchment, yes, but he also had a library of maps, a library of masks collected on his travels, a library of star charts, a library of dried sea creatures organized in tidy rows so that each one seemed to be in the process of transforming into the next.And, most spectacularly, he had a library of instruments.
Among the bronze rooms, there was a room for storing mead, and when I came upon it, my heart nearly stopped, for there was a sea dog man hidden in the bottom tier of a shelf.I shrieked as I would never have thought in a hundred years to find a man tucked into a shelf for mead.A melodious laugh from outside the storeroom let me know someone was approaching, and approaching fast.The hidden man wiggled out of his position moments before the laughing person from outside burst into the room—Farwatcher, it turned out.
The hiding man growled at me with his teeth bared, like he was an actual dog, and then Farwatcher chased him in circles around the room, giggling manically.Eventually, the hiding man stopped running and charged into Farwatcher’s chest.The two of them flailed around on the floor, grunting.
I was trapped in the corner of the room for their entire brawl, my eyes wide, my heart thundering in my chest.And then, it seemed all was light and cheery in the end, for they started laughing together.
The hiding man pointed at me and said something gruff, with menace in his tone.
Farwatcher said, “Yes-something-Soten.”
The middle rooms had silver locks: kitchens—where I received many glares from sea dogs thrashing fruited vines, armouries, and additional training rooms where King Arik himself was wrestling when I entered.I saw a man’s unclothed legs for the first time, hairy and thick with muscle.I saw his bare feet with toes splayed as he grimaced, his rear in the air as he tried to move the king with his strength alone.Where was he moving him to?I could not say.Though both were red in the face from effort and gleaming with sweat.
The rooms unlocked by the keys on the gold ring were at the centre of the palace, and I did not find my first one until the evening of my second day of searching.This was what I had been looking for.I wouldn’t hide Loric’s gold in a room easily accessed by others.I wanted minimal risk.
Though I was pleased to have found the door, I was hungry by that point and had already come to know the sea dogs were more reckless once the sun set, so I made my way back to my chamber.I checked that Loric’s gold was well, and then hurried to King Arik’s main hall to fetch something to eat before the palace grew wild.It was here that the evening meal was laid out for all.
Before securing my fare, I found Dania, who it seemed had come to the hall looking for me.In the short time we’d spent apart, I’d forgotten how forceful she was.She stood near King Arik, nodding as the man spoke to her.She looked so comfortably tall next to him; she wasn’t straining her back for perfected posture, but all the same, there was a stalwart quality to her stance.I couldn’t place what was different in how she stood compared to how I did, but I knew there was a difference.
She saw me and waved with a daring smile, calling me over to them.
“It is good to see you again,” I said, and I meant it.Though she terrified me, she felt like a large piece of wood in a shipwreck: necessary and worthy of all my gratefulness.
“You have been busy since we last spoke!”she said.
I shook my head slightly, not wanting to disagree, but not able to agree with her either.I felt things were moving quite slowly.
“You have had your stones cast by Jorn the Calm—at least partially.You have learned many words it seems.And you have made three enemies.”
“Ha!”King Arik slapped his thigh.“That we know of.”
My eyes felt wide.“Enemies?”
King Arik smiled kindly.“’Tis a good sign, Gentlewoman.It means you are living.”
